Mike WiLL Made It Talks About Fixing Drums On “Mercy” Beat

JLBarrow • December 30, 2012 • No Comments

In an interview with HipHopDX (shout out to the homey @weketchum) producer Mike Will Made It talks about his career as a producer thus far and why he turned down a production deal with Brick Squad. He also explains what his contribution to Kanye West’s hit “Mercy” actually was.

DX: You’d done a lot of work with Atlanta acts, but landing “Mercy” is a completely different story. How did that song happen?

Mike WiLL Made It: That wasn’t my beat. ‘Ye had flew me out of town, and we’re in the studio just working. I thought I was going to get in the studio with him, and he’d be like, “What’s up, bro? What tracks did you produce again? Oh okay, that’s you.” I thought he was going to play it like that. But he really ended up telling me, “Yo, there’s a time when a producer comes through with the crazy style and the crazy knocking 808s, with the new sound that changes the whole game. Right now, you’re that dude.” I’m like, “Damn.” This is a nigga that I grew up listening to, I didn’t even know he was up on any of my shit. He was telling me that he already had the mixtape on his laptop and shit, and I had gave him another mixtape, Part 1, and he was just telling me different mixtape records he had heard me on, with Future and 2 Chainz. I didn’t even know ‘Ye listened to that, and the work we were doing.

From there, he started letting me hear records he was working on, and I let him hear records I was working on, and different beats. He’s like, “You got crazy knock. I’ve got this ‘Lamborghini Mercy’ record, but it’s incomplete. I know which way I want to go, but you’ve got the crazy knock, so I want you to fuck with the drums and see what comes out of it.” I went in there and worked on the drums a little bit, and he ended up liking the drums. But the original producer was Lifted, shout out to Lifted. I just went in there and worked on the drums.